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Sunday, September 9

According to the BBC, Over The Top security such as enormous 'Secure zones' for the APEC conference have left a "bitter taste in Sydney", which I can well believe.

Hence the security's easy breaching by a bunch of Aussie comedians, one dressed as Osama Bin Laden, have made them folk heroes.

Despite a crackdown estimated to have cost as much as A$250 million - more than for the whole Olympics - the team from ABC TV Comedy show Chaser's War On Everything were able to make it within 10m of the InterContinental Hotel where George W Bush was staying.

The skit had been approved by ABC lawyers but was written in the assumption they would be stopped at the checkpoint on the corner of Bent and Macquarie streets (in the centre of Sydney's CBD).

Instead they were waved through the first checkpoint on Macquarie St and then a second which had sniffer dogs. They eventually stopped themselves at Bridge St.

The video, posted on their Myspace page (Male, 88yo, Sydney), shows their fake Canadian motorcade being waved through police checkpoints on the edges of the APEC security zone in central Sydney.

It also shows a police officer taking two polaroid photos of the crew on the scene after they were detained.

Here's Channel Nine's coverage:

The fake motorcade had been staged as part of an APEC-stunt week, which included using fake 'APEC Security' badges and stopping random members of the public and frisking them - everyone complies.

The following day the serial pranksters were at it again, with three members of the team marching a black cardboard motorcade with Canadian flags down Bligh St in the city, just a block away from where police mistakenly waved through their first mock motorcade.